Two robins fly to the other side of a dirt road...
It sounds like the start of a joke.
But here I am on the side of that road, waiting for
my cue as the punch line.
Two minutes of peace. I warred for peace.
I squint into the evening sunlight,
Still clueless on what to write.
Footsteps fill my ears, and I brace myself
For the rush of siblings.
"Coming to get you, Phina," says a high voice.
I relax, turn, and see my baby sister.
She sits down next to me,
and I cuddle her close.
She lets me, for the first time in a while.
She walked from the front yard all the way here---
the edge of the property---
just for me. A large feat for a child of two.
And just like that, the love embraces and replaces the frustration.
She stands; I copy her. She walks over to the road the robins flew,
and I follow.
"Ooh, pretty rock," she coos, and bends down to pick up
a dusty stone.
Nothing special about it in my eyes,
but she certainly thinks so.
She reaches for another one.
In her white dress with red embroidery,
and the golden waves that tumble into her face,
she looks like a picture.
My fingers itch for a camera, my sketchbook, anything.
But I just have my words.
We exclaim over every plain pebble
that she places purposefully into my palms.
Again, the perfection of the image struck me.
A little girl, picking up the most mundane stones
on a road that seemed to stretch out and
just barely touch forever,
framed by a long green fringe of grass on either side.
When my hands were chock-full of gritty treasures,
we made our way back to the house.
Juliet said, matter-of-factly, "You weh hiding, Phina."
"Yes I was, baby girl. But you found me."
And she was the only one who looked.
She chooses a stone out of my hands
and proclaims it her favorite when I ask.
It's creamy, hot-chocolate brown, with a few white foam specks.
Flat. But honest-to-dirt pretty.
We finish our walk back, place the pebbles in a bowl.
I make an exit as she shows Mommy her "pretty rocks!"
I begin to run, still barefoot, to that same edge.
I sit again, begin to write, and smile.
I came here looking for peace,
But peace found me in
---well, I think, anyway---
the best way possible.
It's funny, I muse as I turn over a dry rock in my fingers
How much you can learn from a child
When you choose to open your eyes.
YOU ARE READING
These Insufficient Words
PoetryPoetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. -Robert Frost This is my own collection of thoughts. My own stories, through the deepest sorrow and highest peaks of happiness I've had in my rather brief life, and s...
